Rob Reid understands copyright math because he has the compass cuts and rubber eraser burns of an experienced mathematical optimist grappling with a five-headed label hydra. "The music industry became a frustration for me on October 8, 1998," he told me, "the day that the RIAA sued Diamond Multimedia for releasing the first true mass-market MP3 player, the Rio." Pondering the late '90s, Reid noted, "Their goal was to make open MP3 players completely illegal in this country. So, assault weapons, yes; iPods, no."

Undaunted, Reid went on to found a company called Listen.com, which built the Rhapsody music service. Rhapsody became the first music service to sign all five major labels—but it took until 2002 to get the last grudging approval. The music marketplace was frustrating, as we can all remember. “By refusing to sell their music online for years, the labels gave piracy a monopoly on all of the great things that the Internet can enable for music lovers,” he told me. “This meant that hundreds of millions of people discovered music downloads through pirate services, so piracy was utterly entrenched by the time we were finally allowed to compete with it, years later.

"In embargoing their music from legal services, and greeting almost every element of today’s online music experience with lawsuits—not just MP3 players, but locker services, interactive radio services, and much more—the labels gave piracy a half-decade monopoly on awesomeness. I believe that the music industry would have something close to double its current US revenues today if it hadn’t blasted itself in the foot, shin, hip, torso, and chest by doing this.”

Instead, what the entertainment industry has right now is gall. Recent years have seen the positive growth of legit online music and videos services flanked by ever more ridiculous legislation, such as the recent repugnance known as SOPA. With those recent bad vibes in the air, I asked Reid what it was he thought TEDsters would get out of the presentation. After all, he didn’t hold back.

Reid’s optimism came through. “TED is a convivial, idea-centric environment,” he noted, "an event replete with players from all sides, all walks of life... including the warring families of LA and Silicon Valley. The key is that word 'convivial'—the SOPA brawl got quite vitriolic, which can make it hard to have a constructive conversation.”

Reid’s goal was to capture and represent some of the rhetoric from that past decade and a half in a way that would fill the hall with laughter, even if some of it came at the expense of some clearly ridiculous industry arguments. “Everyone can laugh at silly infographics,” Reid opined while silently crushing the serious journalism dreams of hacks everywhere. “And who doesn't want to deface a Leave-it-to-Beaver-like Christmas scene with pirate-and-Santa graffiti?”

It’s time to learn about Negative Employment, the crisis of ringtone piracy, and a threat on the horizon: aliens pirating music! Without further ado, here’s the talk:

Rob Reid: The $8 billion iPod

TED is an amazing event for a number of reasons, but my personal love affair with TED is centered squarely on the stage, where we see unpredictable and often eye-opening presentations. And they happen so fast.

The brilliance of Reid’s talk is that he thoroughly skewers the content industry’s dubious appeal to quantitative reasoning. We’ve all see the headlines proclaiming huge numbers of dollars, jobs, and patents lost to piracy. The appeal to quantitative measures is supposed to undermine counterarguments by doing two things: slyly stepping into a (pretend) world of objectivity, and raising the alarm with big, scary numbers. It’s hard to look at those kinds of headlines in the same way after Reid’s elegantly hilarious skewering.

Reid’s examination of Copyright Math began when he started working on his soon-to-be published debut science fiction novel, Year Zero, which Random House is publishing in early July (we’ll be reviewing it). Year Zero tells the story of how the toxic legal byproducts of some overly litigious lawyers cause problems that make global warming seem downright cozy. Not to give it away, but could you imagine how pissed off an alien music lover might get if he was sued into bankruptcy for pirating a few lousy Rick Astley songs?

In closing, I asked Reid if he thought his talk, well received as it was even by music industry lawyers at TED, signaled that the hysteria is now over. “By Hysteria I assume you’re referring to The Human League’s disappointing 1984 follow-up to their multiplatinum album Dare. I think Hysteria was over the day it hit the shelves. I’m amazed that this still interests you. Why are you asking me about The Human League anyway? Don’t know you know it’s 2012?”

Editor's Note: In asking this question, I was of course referencing Def Lepard's 1987 studio album of the same name. Clearly, Mr. Reid was a tad Euro when he was growing up.

Stay tuned, as we have more information on Reid’s upcoming work shortly.

Ken Fisher
Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation. Emailken@arstechnica.com//Twitter@kenfisher

Yes, but you don't have to do that ever again. You can pay nothing ever again and still enjoy all of that. In the last 20 years there have been no new formats to displace the current one versus the 3 formats you might have had to deal with in the 20 years prior.

Yes, but you don't have to do that ever again. You can pay nothing ever again and still enjoy all of that. In the last 20 years there have been no new formats to displace the current one versus the 3 formats you might have had to deal with in the 20 years prior.

Ok thank you this was hilariously accurate, bookmarks page for further showing to people not worth arguing with... :-)

I've always found the numbers the media industry hilarious not because of the size of it rather the non-existing explanation of where they came from. They are basically worth the same as most statistic. "83% of all statistic is maid up on the spot...."

I fairly certain that the Copyright Math people learned statistics at the same place that generates the publicly displayed numbers for carbon emissions. I've always been amazed that otherwise intelligent scientists have no problem swallowing the statistics that a car that burns X amount of gasoline (which contains lots of Carbon, but certainly isn't all carbon.) somehow emits Y tons of carbon per year, where X <<<< Y.

It is really sad when any public debate falls into the silliness of trumpeting made up "shock the audience" numbers.

I fairly certain that the Copyright Math people learned statistics at the same place that generates the publicly displayed numbers for carbon emissions. I've always been amazed that otherwise intelligent scientists have no problem swallowing the statistics that a car that burns X amount of gasoline (which contains lots of Carbon, but certainly isn't all carbon.) somehow emits Y tons of carbon per year, where X <<<< Y.

It is really sad when any public debate falls into the silliness of trumpeting made up "shock the audience" numbers.

Yes but if you do a simple elementary calculation yourself you will find it's very reasonable.

A very!! efficient car emits approximately 100gCO2 per km travelled.Average mileage of US car is 12500 miles which is about 20100 km.

I fairly certain that the Copyright Math people learned statistics at the same place that generates the publicly displayed numbers for carbon emissions. I've always been amazed that otherwise intelligent scientists have no problem swallowing the statistics that a car that burns X amount of gasoline (which contains lots of Carbon, but certainly isn't all carbon.) somehow emits Y tons of carbon per year, where X <<<< Y.

Would that be due to the fact that CO2 contains ~27% carbon by weight?

I fairly certain that the Copyright Math people learned statistics at the same place that generates the publicly displayed numbers for carbon emissions. I've always been amazed that otherwise intelligent scientists have no problem swallowing the statistics that a car that burns X amount of gasoline (which contains lots of Carbon, but certainly isn't all carbon.) somehow emits Y tons of carbon per year, where X <<<< Y.

It is really sad when any public debate falls into the silliness of trumpeting made up "shock the audience" numbers.

So... more CO2 is produced than the weight of the gasoline itself. Crazy, right? But wait. The oxygen atoms in carbon dioxide come from the air. Carbon has an atomic weight of 12, and oxygen of 16. There are two oxygen atoms per carbon dioxide molecule, and only one carbon atom. So the weight of the carbon is only 16/44 or 36% of the weight of the CO2. Oxygen from the air contributes the other 64%.

On that basis if gasoline was 100% carbon, you'd expect 12782 lbs of CO2. Gasoline is actually about 90% carbon. Sure, there's a bunch of hydrogen atoms in there, but they hardly weight anything. Gasoline isn't chemically pure but, for example, octane is C8H18. That's a total molecular weight of 114, of which 96 is carbon and just 18 is hydrogen. Other hydrocarbons in gasoline have between 4 and 12 carbon atoms.

So, not actually so silly, if you look at the actual numbers and where they are coming from.

As for Copyright Math, if you watch the video you will see he is actually skewering the ridiculous and offensive numbers the RIAA have been putting out. Because in their case, if you look at the actual numbers, they are basically just lies concealed in numeric form. For example he notes that the number of jobs supposedly lost (according to the RIAA) in the music/movie business, is greater than the number of jobs that existed in the music/movie business before piracy began. Not even plausible.

Yes, but you don't have to do that ever again. You can pay nothing ever again and still enjoy all of that. In the last 20 years there have been no new formats to displace the current one versus the 3 formats you might have had to deal with in the 20 years prior.

I've always been amazed that otherwise intelligent scientists have no problem swallowing the statistics that a car that burns X amount of gasoline (which contains lots of Carbon, but certainly isn't all carbon.) somehow emits Y tons of carbon per year, where X <<<< Y..

Umm. Wow. Are you joking?

Oh those silly scientists. It's almost as if they think there's some other element involved. Some common atmospheric element integrally involved in the process of combustion. Some element which makes up almost 3/4 the molecular weight of CO2...

I fairly certain that the Copyright Math people learned statistics at the same place that generates the publicly displayed numbers for carbon emissions. I've always been amazed that otherwise intelligent scientists have no problem swallowing the statistics that a car that burns X amount of gasoline (which contains lots of Carbon, but certainly isn't all carbon.) somehow emits Y tons of carbon per year, where X <<<< Y.

It is really sad when any public debate falls into the silliness of trumpeting made up "shock the audience" numbers.

To be fair, CO2 has 12g carbon for every 32g of atmospheric O2, so 1 mol of carbon emission from a car would be 44g though it would transform only 12g of carbon.

This was very funny, but am I the only one who was hoping for some actual numbers, instead of just skewering the obviously made-up ones? Or at least an idea of a possible method for arriving at some actual numbers?

This was very funny, but am I the only one who was hoping for some actual numbers, instead of just skewering the obviously made-up ones? Or at least an idea of a possible method for arriving at some actual numbers?

That is the whole point - there are no actual numbers. It's like saying that corn producers are loosing billions because people use cane/beat sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup.

This was very funny, but am I the only one who was hoping for some actual numbers, instead of just skewering the obviously made-up ones? Or at least an idea of a possible method for arriving at some actual numbers?

That is the whole point - there are no actual numbers. It's like saying that corn producers are loosing billions because people use cane/beat sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup.

If presented to congress as actual argument, that fucker would probably pass.

I fairly certain that the Copyright Math people learned statistics at the same place that generates the publicly displayed numbers for carbon emissions. I've always been amazed that otherwise intelligent scientists have no problem swallowing the statistics that a car that burns X amount of gasoline (which contains lots of Carbon, but certainly isn't all carbon.) somehow emits Y tons of carbon per year, where X <<<< Y.

It is really sad when any public debate falls into the silliness of trumpeting made up "shock the audience" numbers.

So... more CO2 is produced than the weight of the gasoline itself. Crazy, right?

First, scientists use the weight of added CO2 (not just carbon) because it is a number that more accurately reflects the environmental effect. It also allows easier comparison between other sources that emit CO2 into the atmosphere that don't do so via combustion. This effect would be multiplicative then for every carbon in the gasoline that is consumed. So there is nothing 'funny' about their math.

In fact if anyone could be said to be obfuscating the 'truth' with numbers here, it would be you. It doesn't matter if the CO2 from combustion stole most of it's weight from the air, what matters is the quantity of CO2, not carbon, that has been added to the atmosphere (traded for O2). So far it seems the planet's natural carbon cycle has not been adapting to absorb this excess production, so it builds up, and has been building up for decades. It's not so strange when you think about it... creating all that gasoline took millions of years of photosynthesis, and we've been inarguably re-releasing it in several orders of magnitude less time. While the ecosystem can certainly adapt to some extent, it's highly unlikely there's some heretofore 'unknown' mechanism that is going to pop up to absorb all this extra CO2. Are you expecting that photosynthetic life is also going to increase by several orders of magnitude to offset this? Ha.

Dang, I only have 6.125 days of music. Although there's about a day's worth that I didn't pay for... because it was being given away for free, either by the artists or by Amazon. Oh well. I'm discovering new music a lot faster these days since I've found some independent artists whose music is "relevant to my interests," so I don't wait for Christmas, birthdays, or pent-up consumerism to get new music anymore. That whole "finding new music" thing is part of the problem with me buying more music. Pandora helped tremendously, but I started running up against its limitations quite a while back. Commercial radio is not something I enjoy anymore because it defeats the whole "new" aspect of "new music" by playing a handful of headliners right into the ground. The genres and styles of music I like aren't being made into videos for music television. Labels only put up a few things on Youtube/Vevo (usually stuff made for music video television) and the discoverability of new music there is pretty limited. Most of the new artists I find and pick up are putting their own stuff out there, doing an end-run around the whole publisher/curator/content-provider/label side of music, and definitely not using the methods that the RIAA is trying to push.

.....Most of the new artists I find and pick up are putting their own stuff out there, doing an end-run around the whole publisher/curator/content-provider/label side of music, and definitely not using the methods that the RIAA is trying to push.

This. What the major media companies are REALLY afraid of isn't the Internet being used to distribute content they own. It's the Internet being used to distribute content they DON'T own.

I fairly certain that the Copyright Math people learned statistics at the same place that generates the publicly displayed numbers for carbon emissions. I've always been amazed that otherwise intelligent scientists have no problem swallowing the statistics that a car that burns X amount of gasoline (which contains lots of Carbon, but certainly isn't all carbon.) somehow emits Y tons of carbon per year, where X <<<< Y.

It is really sad when any public debate falls into the silliness of trumpeting made up "shock the audience" numbers.

You're forgetting that carbon attaches to oxygen during combustion. That's where the extra mass comes from.

I fairly certain that the Copyright Math people learned statistics at the same place that generates the publicly displayed numbers for carbon emissions. I've always been amazed that otherwise intelligent scientists have no problem swallowing the statistics that a car that burns X amount of gasoline (which contains lots of Carbon, but certainly isn't all carbon.) somehow emits Y tons of carbon per year, where X <<<< Y.

It is really sad when any public debate falls into the silliness of trumpeting made up "shock the audience" numbers.

So... more CO2 is produced than the weight of the gasoline itself. Crazy, right?

First, scientists use the weight of added CO2 (not just carbon) because it is a number that more accurately reflects the environmental effect. It also allows easier comparison between other sources that emit CO2 into the atmosphere that don't do so via combustion. This effect would be multiplicative then for every carbon in the gasoline that is consumed. So there is nothing 'funny' about their math.

In fact if anyone could be said to be obfuscating the 'truth' with numbers here, it would be you. It doesn't matter if the CO2 from combustion stole most of it's weight from the air, what matters is the quantity of CO2, not carbon, that has been added to the atmosphere (traded for O2). So far it seems the planet's natural carbon cycle has not been adapting to absorb this excess production, so it builds up, and has been building up for decades. It's not so strange when you think about it... creating all that gasoline took millions of years of photosynthesis, and we've been inarguably re-releasing it in several orders of magnitude less time. While the ecosystem can certainly adapt to some extent, it's highly unlikely there's some heretofore 'unknown' mechanism that is going to pop up to absorb all this extra CO2. Are you expecting that photosynthetic life is also going to increase by several orders of magnitude to offset this? Ha.

Did you stop reading my post at "Crazy"? You omitted the whole part where I explained why this is not actually crazy but in fact absolutely correct.

It is "crazy" in the sense that it defies our everyday intuition about how things work. If you talk to someone who has no understanding of the underlying chemistry, such as a child, and ask them what weighs more, the gasoline that is burning or the gases that are released, they are going to say the gasoline, and probably they are going to look at you funny for even asking.

One of the things that makes science fun is that it often shows us that the real world defies our expectations. The idea that invisible gases can have weight is one of those crazy (but true) ideas that is just not natural for people to believe. These wrong expectations about the world are part of why so many people have so much difficulty believing in climate change. The original poster I responded to was demonstrating that -- he believed that this result made so little sense that he was prepared to assume everything climate scientists was a lie. I think it's important to explain in detail why those expectations are wrong, and that even though the results do seem crazy (more CO2 by weight is released than gasoline is consumed) they are, in fact, true.